


Hands Into the Fire

by SomeEnchantedEve



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeEnchantedEve/pseuds/SomeEnchantedEve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Catelyn thinks that good, honest men like Ned Stark are not made to be kings. </p><p>In truth, she feels no better equipped to be a queen, but she, at the very least, has an idea of how these southron courtly games are played. She hopes that is enough, what little it may be."</p><p>A series of interconnected one-shots, set in an AU where Robert's death leads to Ned Stark taking the Iron Throne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Queen

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking for a long time that it's strange that every AU that has Ned Stark as the king at the end of the Rebellion has Cersei as his queen. While this is a fascinating AU scenario, being the ridiculous Catelyn fan I am, I of course wanted one where Ned ended up as king but was still married to Catelyn. =) 
> 
> This is going to be a series of chapters from various POVs all within the same AU. They will not necessarily follow each other/may be out of order, and are all snippet views of how different things might have been if the Starks had taken the crown. There is no big overarching plot beyond the AU scenario in of itself, but all the pieces will fit together and events from one chapter may be referenced in another. 
> 
> Tags will be updated as chapters are added!

When Catelyn was a child, her father took her with him to court upon one occasion. She had been thrilled to be granted such an honor, and for years the memory of the opulence and extravagance of King’s Landing, seat of the mighty Targaryens, would drift through her mind as she fell asleep, sending a smile playing over her lips. She could recall with startling clarity the shrill cry of the merchants with their wares – silk and fine bolts of cloth, spices and freshly baked bread – and the grandeur of the castle overlooking the bay, looming ever closer as their carriage rollicked over the cobblestones, through the gates and up the hill. 

She sees it now through clearer eyes, a woman’s eyes: the hot stink of it so unlike the sweet air that flows off the rivers of the Trident, the dirt and poverty that lingers in the corners though the city’s gold cloaks try and shoo the unpleasantness from her eyes. The air is sticky, and she swelters in gowns made for the cold, cut in northern fashions and sewn in shades of Stark grey and Riverlands blue. The dressmaker swears new gowns will soon be finished, but the meantime her own from her youth, more fit to this weather, do not fit over her breasts and hips now that she has borne a child and so she must wear the ones she had sewn for the journey she thought she would be making: to Winterfell. 

She had never thought to find herself in King’s Landing. 

It is nothing of the glamour she remembers, and her sole relief is walking with Robb down by the waterside. His steps are still unsteady, and he clutches at her fingers with chubby fists as she relishes the soft breeze coming off the bay, smelling of salt and brine. The sand is coarse beneath her bare feet, and spreads far up the coastline behind her and piles against the wall that guards the castle. She follows close as a shadow as Robb toddles towards the water before plopping down onto his bottom and splashing happily in the ebbing surf, and by the end of the evening she returns to the castle with her gown sodden at the hem, leaving a trail of water upon the pristine marble floors as she walks.

They are the few minutes of peace she is afforded, when she is left alone with her son. Ser Barristan lingers back near the wall, where his white cloak nearly blends against the weathered stones, silent and still to offer them a measure of privacy, and only the gleam of the sun against the hilt of his sword, a sudden blinding flash, gives away his presence. 

Still, he is largely unnoticed, the few times a shrieking child with dirt on their cheeks and breeches rolled over their knobby knees will splash through the lapping water, a harried mother not far behind. _She_ is largely unnoticed as well – the world now that the war is ended is new and strange, and she is still so newly come to the capital that the people do not recognize her yet. Before she leaves to sit by Robb at the water’s edge, she puts aside the slim silver crown that she wears whilst sitting court with her husband, and the lack of any sort of ornate finery is as far of a disguise as she needs. 

She had tried to protest the need of a guard at all, in face of such anonymity – she misses the freedom of home, to go and come as she pleased. But she is learning that the luxury of being alone is something that she left behind in Riverrun, before she learned of Robert Baratheon’s death, before the capital was captured and she was spirited in all haste to join Ned in King’s Landing. Solace belonged to Catelyn Tully of Riverrun, not the queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and it is only one of many adjustments she has had to make, between the life she had prepared herself for and the one she finds herself suddenly thrust into instead. 

And it had certainly been sudden – her trunk had been packed for a fortnight while they waited for news of the sack of the capital, and she had not known whether she would travel to Winterfell, as she always thought, or if she would instead escape to the Free Cities with Robb to evade loyalist forces determined to place Prince Viserys on the throne after the death of Rhaegar Targarygen and the murder of his two children. She had barely read the letter scrawled in Jon Arryn’s cramped hand, put into the leather-clad hands of a rider rather than trusted to the wings of a raven – the capital secured, her husband crowned now that Robert no longer lived to wear it himself – before her father had hurried her to leave her childhood home, and with it, everything she knew.

She did not learn the reason for her father’s haste until she had arrived in King’s Landing. It had been then she had first heard the whispers of Tywin Lannister’s maneuverings, how he had tried to trade the bodies of Rhaegar’s children for a crown for his daughter. She had held her son close, suddenly keenly aware of his entirely Tully looks upon hearing the sly implications that had been made of his parentage, in a bid to have her husband set her aside. Her anger at such indignity had been tinged with the fearful realization that if he wished it, Ned could indeed deny claim to their son, and no one would say otherwise. 

Though even then she had known that Robb could have been born with black hair and grey eyes, and still had Ned wished to put Catelyn aside and wed the beautiful Cersei Lannister, he certainly could have done so. He was king now, and who would deny the king? 

But her husband had again proved himself an honorable man, and the whispers had been all that remained. Tywin himself had returned to Casterly Rock and taken both of his children with him, and Catelyn found her husband incapable of speaking even the name of Lannister without bitterness in his voice. It remained the matter over which Ned and Jon Arryn, now serving as Hand of the King, disagreed the most fiercely. Jon urged Ned to reinstate Jaime Lannister to the Kingsguard, to make a marriage between Cersei Lannister and his own brother Benjen, now the Lord of Winterfell. 

Ned, on the other hand, had little interest in wedding his last surviving sibling to, in his own words, the daughter of a man who had not only sanctioned the death of mere babes, but expected to be rewarded for doing so. And he was much of a mind to send Ser Jaime to the Wall for his crimes, sharply asking Lord Arryn why he would want a knight known to be a Kingslayer to protect him and his family – why, in fact, he would want such a man near him at all. 

“You must make concessions,” Lord Arryn had warned. “Tywin Lannister is a dangerous enemy to have.” 

Ned had frowned at that, still unconvinced, but Catelyn had seen the wisdom in her good-brother’s words. It is all so far from the code of honor kept in the north, so far from what her husband was raised to believe, and she thinks that good, honest men like Ned Stark are not made to be kings. 

In truth, she feels no better equipped to be a queen, but she, at the very least, has an idea of how these southron courtly games are played. She hopes that is enough, what little it may be.

Lord Arryn had wanted a large coronation, the better to be seen and for the commonfolk and lords alike to know that the war was over and the throne secured, but Ned had protested such expense, and so the affair had been small and quiet. Her gown had been grey and warm, and the sun had beat down hot upon her head as they stood outside the Sept of Baelor. 

She still recalls the surprising weight of the crown as the High Septon had placed it upon her brow, and she had wondered how much heavier Ned’s – larger and with so many more responsibilities tied to it – had felt to him. 

Her husband had been little more to a stranger to her, a man she had never thought to marry, who took her to wife in his brother’s place and then made her a queen, but she had instinctively reached for his hand, and he had taken it and held tight. In his eyes, when he glanced over at her, she had seen all the uncertainties that lived in her own heart, the realization of what an unfamiliar path fate had thrown them to travel. _And yet travel it we must._

“Your Grace,” Ser Barristan speaks, stepping forward, and as ever, it takes Catelyn a moment to realize that he is speaking to _her_. She wonders if she shall ever grow accustomed. “Forgive me. The hour grows late.” 

She glances up, shielding her eyes against the setting sun as it dips below the horizon over the bay, making the water shine an emerald green as the light skips across it. “You speak truly, ser,” she says ruefully, with a hint of regret, casting a glance over her shoulder back at the castle. 

She lightly dusts the bottoms of her feet free of the wet sand clinging to them before sliding back on her slippers and scooping Robb up from the ground. He yelps in protest, squirming in her arms before opening his mouth wide to howl his displeasure, and she smiles, amused at his completely unprincely behavior. 

Robb, too, had been born for different things. 

Ser Barristan falls into step a pace behind her, and she shifts Robb to her hip and pretends that the distance does not make her uncomfortable. The first time she had been accompanied by Ser Barristan, she had bade him to walk beside her, and he had politely refused, determined to abide by certain traditions and courtesies, despite the whispers of ‘Usurper’ that still plague Ned’s steps. She wonders if Ser Barristan whispers the same to himself, if he resents the king he now serves, regrets bending the knee. 

It is a torment to her husband, she knows, the throne and kingdom a heavy weight he never wished to bear, and at times, Catelyn thinks if it were not for Lord Arryn’s influence, Ned would gladly leave the capital behind and take his family back to Winterfell. 

But Jon Arryn had risked much and more for this war, for the two boys he had taken to ward, and now only one remained, and to that one he had handed a crown. And with it, the task of rebuilding the kingdom from the ground up, to make something good of the ashes left behind. Ned is nothing if not dutiful, and it is far too late for retreat now.

The Kingsguard is but one of many factions in sore need of rebuilding. Ser Barristan and Ser Jaime Lannister had been the sole two surviving members, when the war had ended, and all of the court knows that the latter is currently banished to the heights of Casterly Rock. Jon Arryn had brought Mandon Moore to court, and Ned had abided his advice to add him to the guard, but the four – or five, should Ned follow through on his threat to send Jaime to the Wall – remaining vacancies plague Catelyn’s thoughts. Ned, for his part, seems barely concerned with the absence of them. The mere thought of a Kingsguard, of seven knights solely devoted to his safety, is strange to him, the second son of Winterfell. 

Even plainly attired, she no longer escapes notice once she enters the castle again, and she keeps her face composed, distantly polite, as lords and ladies newly come to court to collect the plunder left behind at the end of war drop low bows and curtsies to her. She answers them with soft smiles, with gracious nods, even as Robb squawks and screams in her arms, his face flushing in anger at having been interrupted at his play. 

She has already learned, in the short time they have thus reigned, that pleasantries are not her husband’s strength and so it will fall to her to be the smiling face, to make everyone believe that all will be well when she is not entirely certain herself that such a thing is true. As she walks towards the Hand’s Solar to meet her husband and Jon Arryn, she remembers the pride on her father’s face the day she had been crowned, and thinks he would be proud of her practiced courtesies.


	2. The Hand of the King

Time and maesters have healed Jon’s wounds from battle, but he still feels the ache of them down to his bones. It is a dull pain that racks him, from the moment he wakes and dresses in garb suited to the humid climate of the capital and clasps on his chain of office, until the moment he slides beneath silken sheets into the bed that he thinks will never quite feel like his own. The maester claims that it will soon pass, but Jon knows that he shall never again know true comfort, that it is age that has plagued him since the end of the war. _The mark of an old man_ , he thinks grimly, but still he walks straight and strong – it would not do to show weakness, not now, not now that he is so needed by the king that he practically pushed upon the throne. 

He has guilt for that, at times. He does not doubt that Ned, reeling from the loss of so many he loved – his father, his brother, his sister, Robert – wants nothing more than to go north to Winterfell and never set foot below the Neck again. “You should be king,” Ned had told him fiercely when news had come of Robert’s death and Jon had realized how everything had changed. There had been no time for grief, just as there had been no time for it at the beginning of this war, when Aerys had written of the deaths of Rickard and Brandon Stark and demanded the heads of Jon’s two wards. “You are a far better choice than I.” 

In some ways, Jon knows the sense of Ned’s words. Ned is but a second son, had expected his entire life to inherit little and to serve as a bannerman to his brother, Brandon. Growing up, he had neither the looming lordship that Robert had for his own (and at times had even been vaguely aware of), nor – more importantly – the royal blood to bolster his claim to the highest seat in the land. Ned had taken the throne with little experience as a lord in his own right, having never ruled a day from Winterfell itself, and with only right of conquest as Aegon himself once used to secure his crown. 

But Ned is _young_ , and it is that fact which assures Jon that he has made the right decision, that he had no right accepting the crown and throne on his own behalf. Ned is young, with a young wife who has already borne him a son – a sturdy, healthy babe - and Jon of all people knows how difficult acquiring a son can be. He still has hopes, with this new marriage to Lysa Tully, but hopes are not a child of flesh and blood such as Robb Stark is. This is not a kingdom suited for an old man with no heirs to take the throne; the realm is in great need of stability, a long stretch of peace after such turmoil, and time to acclimate to the disposal of the Targaryens. In one move, the kingdom had a king and prince both, the best thing Jon could offer to help stem the flow of blood. 

And so he had not even considered Tywin Lannister’s sly insinuations that his daughter may be a more fit queen, even before Ned had indignantly refused when the idea had been brought before him. To put aside a lawful wife, especially one so quick to bear a healthy son and heir, would be nothing short of madness. And whilst Tywin Lannister is not a man that Jon would want as an enemy, nor would he want to turn Hoster Tully into a foe by so blatantly insulting his daughter’s honor; beginning a regime by repaying allies and their loyalty with betrayal and deceit is not the sort of court that Jon hopes to make. 

The best solution, the easiest one, the one that Ned angrily rejects whenever Jon mentions it, would be to wed Cersei Lannister to Benjen Stark, and pray that they had a girl to betroth to the prince. _It would be a generation later than he hoped, but Tywin would be pleased enough to know his great-grandson would one day sit the Iron Throne._ With the Lannisters safely appeased, the newly formed council would be able to turn their attention toward making peace with Dorne, still seething over the deaths of Princess Elia and her children. _Would that they only knew the king’s thoughts on the matter,_ Jon thinks briefly, but Ned’s angry tirades over the actions of Tywin Lannister are something that is best left to the privacy of his council chambers. _We cannot make an enemy of the Rock._

Such a concession – to not only pardon Tywin and Jaime Lannister, but to make them family through marriage – rankles Ned even now, and Jon worries that he shall never relent on the matter. There is much that Jon fears Ned will never relent on, much that will leave the kingdom unsettled when peace is so desperately needed, and the conflict with the Lannisters is but one of Jon’s many concerns, only one of many matters that must be resolved, and quickly. 

The other that most often plagues him is the issue of Ned’s nephew. 

Jon knows why Ned wants to keep the boy in the capital. He is the last tangible piece of his sister that remains – her child, the son that Ned had plucked from her arms after she had drawn her last breath. This infant boy’s very existence is kept quiet – he is a war-born bastard, a common enough occurrence that it serves as enough of an explanation to any bold inquiries to the few that happen to see him. There are rumors enough - that the boy is Ned’s child, is Robert’s, and even a few that guess at the truth of the matter, that the Lady Lyanna bore Prince Rhaegar a son in captivity. 

For all the babe’s undeniably Stark looks, when Jon looks upon his tiny, peaceful face, he does not see what Ned sees – the likeness of his sister, of the family lost. _A bastard prince,_ he instead thinks as he stands over the child’s cradle, watching the infant sleep and breathe softly through parted lips. _A potential disaster for the peace we are trying to make._

Jon Snow, as he is known for his mother’s heritage, may be a bastard boy; but with Rhaegar’s brother and sister far in exile, the only other Targaryens left in the world, the babe that Ned wishes to keep so close is the most likely figurehead to fuel a loyalist uprising. _He is a sweet, quiet babe,_ Jon thinks to himself, _but a danger to us all if he remains here._

He knows before he even voices them that such warnings would sway Ned not at all, and so Jon turns his focus instead to the good of the boy himself. “Half the court will call his father a rapist, and the other half will tell him he is the rightful king, that his own uncle usurped his throne,” Jon warns, looking down at the calm sleeping countenance. “He will never know a day of peace here. Do you wish such a fate upon him? Would you sister want such a thing?” 

Ned’s mouth settles into a grim line, his lips pressed together and the corners pinched down in a small frown. When he furrows his brow, lines appear across his forehead which make him seem older than his years. _He is scarcely one-and-twenty,_ Jon thinks. _War and ruling will make us all old before our time._

Ned does not speak for a long moment – he speaks very little of finding Jon Snow in the tower, of Lyanna’s death. When Jon tries to imagine that day, he finds the scene vague and dreamy, and Ned keeps the exact details to himself – whether he does so from grief or from shame or from something else entirely, that is what Jon is uncertain of. He had merely ridden home with the boy tucked in the arms of a wet nurse, and spoken of his sister’s death and her last wish – that her son should be provided for. 

At Ned’s stubborn silence, Jon lifts his eyes from the boy in the cradle to meet the queen’s gaze over Ned’s shoulder. Catelyn stands on the other side of the room, far enough to give them the illusion of privacy but near enough to hear if she should be called upon. She holds Robb, the little prince, on her shoulder, sleepy and sated after having eaten, his copper-haired head cuddled against the crook of his mother’s neck. 

Catelyn knows no more of the child’s brief history than Jon does – or if she does, she keeps silent on the matter – and while she does not openly argue with her husband and king, Jon can see the agreement in her eyes at his persuasions. Her gaze upon Rhaegar’s bastard son is always cautious, wary – a mixture of sympathy for an orphaned boy and suspicion at this great threat to her own child. _She is not so blinded by affection that she does not see the inherent danger._

“Is it not better that he be raised here?” Ned demands. “He will be told such things no matter where he is sent. Is it not better than he grows up knowing me, knowing his cousins, and therefore knowing the truth?”

“Court is not the place for a bastard, especially a royal one,” Jon replies wearily, and from behind Ned, he sees Catelyn give a barely noticeable nod. “You know it is not,” he adds, his voice soft, and Ned scowls, angry at the simple truth of his Hand’s words. 

“So, what do you suggest, then?” he snaps in response. “Do you suggest that I send him to Lord Tywin, so that he may put another innocent child to the slaughter?” Jon flinches, and he hears Catelyn suck in a breath between her teeth, and hold Robb a bit closer, as though it is her own child at risk of such a fate. _And it may be, one day,_ Jon thinks grimly. The business with Rhaegar’s children had been a foul one, a vile, cruel act, and with this babe left in the capital, Jon’s greatest fear is loyalist retaliation. 

“Of course not,” Jon replies, passing a hand over his face, briefly pinching the bridge of his nose to try and ward off the ache in his head. _I can only suffer one argument at a time,_ he thinks, hoping that the question of bringing the Lannisters back into the fold of the kingdom will not be raised once more. 

With a sigh, he rests his hand on Ned’s shoulder, as though he is the boy still following Robert through the halls of the Eyrie, making mischief, and not a crowned king. _It had always been Robert, causing the trouble, and Ned would follow_ , Jon remembers, and they find themselves in not such a different situation now – Robert is gone, now, and Ned follows. 

“Send the boy to your brother in Winterfell,” Jon says softly. “Let him be raised away from this pit of vipers that would try and poison him against you; let him be raised in the North. Is that not what Lyanna would wish? For her son to grow up in Winterfell?” 

At the sound of his sister’s name, it is Ned’s turn to flinch, and he glances away, turning his back on Jon, on the babe in the cradle. “And you?” he demands of Catelyn, clearly hoping that she would agree with his thought to keep the boy in King’s Landing. “Do you think I should send him away?” 

Jon can see Catelyn hesitate, pause to turn the words over in her mind. “I think there is no one you could trust more than your brother Benjen, to see to his care,” she finally says carefully – but despite her care in choosing her words, Ned still visibly stiffens. 

“I am also more than capable of seeing to his care,” he tells her, voice short. 

“I know,” she replies, her voice soothing. “And I know that he is your sister’s son, and you wish to keep him near. But he is Rhaegar Targaryen’s son, too, and there are those that will never forget it, and will never allow him to forget it. And so we, too, must keep it in mind.” 

“The boy cannot help his parentage,” Ned protests. It is his most common defense, the argument he had made when Jon had asked, when he had first returned with the boy in arms, if he had truly wished to raise the child that was born from such violent beginnings, the product of a kidnapping and rape. Ned had looked away, his face solemn and unreadable, and Jon had wondered what secrets he kept when all he would say was _the boy cannot help his parentage._

“No,” Catelyn agrees. “But it is his parentage still, and it cannot be changed.” 

“I will take him myself, if you wish it,” Jon says suddenly. He has not visited Winterfell in years, not since before he took Ned to ward, when Benjen Stark, now Lord of Winterfell, had been a mere babe in arms. He knows the travel to be long and treacherous, and he hesitates to leave Ned with the kingdom in such disarray, but if his accompanying guard is small the journey will not be overlong. The troubles would wait the pleasure of his return. _And perhaps I can speak to Benjen Stark myself of the matter of Cersei Lannister. Perhaps if he is the one to bring the suggestion to Ned…_

“Very well,” Ned replies, voice hard, and Jon knows that though he relents – for Winterfell, for no other place other than Winterfell – he is still displeased with the outcome. “But I shall take him myself. It has been long since I have seen my brother, and my home. And I will make certain that the proper provisions have been made for my sister, brother, and father, so that they may rest in peace in the crypts.” 

Jon does not protest – the victory is so hard-won that he does not wish to push the matter any further. And so he does not remind Ned that his presence is required in the capital, that King’s Landing is now his home, that every decision for the rest of his life will have to be taken keeping the whole of the Seven Kingdoms in mind. 

_He is young,_ he tells himself instead. _He will become accustomed to this new station._ And until then, it is much as it was when Jon warded the boys in the Eyrie – it is his duty to guide, and to teach. 

And as before, he is determined to do so to the best of his abilities, whatever obstacles may lie ahead.


End file.
